Category Archives: gaming

It’s been a while since my last blog post… I’ve been busy with work, the gym… and… playing lots of games! Here’s a run down of that last activity.

November 2017

After telling myself I wouldn’t be buying Skyrim for the second third time, I bought Skyrim for the third time. I’ve spent the most time in the game this time, but I still got bored of the main quest. Pretty sure I finished the Dark Brotherhood questline, starting being a thieving shit in the Thieves Guild and generally romped my way across the world.

Playing Skyrim on a portable is really neat, and probably the reason I managed to put so much time into it. I will go back and finish the main quest line at least, but for now I’m done with Skyrim again. I’m hoping for a Fallout port in the future so I can buy those again and play on the go. Please, Bethesda.

I was deep into Stardew Valley too which continued into December. I’ve spent more time in Stardew Valley (60 hours) than any other Switch game in the last 11 months.

Stardew is just the perfect zone out game after a long day. It’s super duper easy to get sucked into ‘one more day’ too. For now I’ve stopped playing Stardew until the multiplayer is released later this year so I’m not entirely burned on the game.

Not that kind of multiplayer….

Rounding out the top three for November was Super Mario Odyssey. I can’t really say much that others haven’t. It’s such a good game and I need to go back and do it justice at some point. I got to the credits (not hard in any modern Mario) and haven’t been back since. I might actually start a new save when I go back.

Top 3 Switch Games in November

December 2017

I think there was a Splatfest that I played in… I only really play Splatoon during Splatfests…. Nothing much else to say about December except that I got Mario + Rabbids for Christmas.

Top 3 Switch Games in December

January 2018

Golf Story! Golf Story! Golf Story! What a great game!If you own a Nintendo Switch, and don’t have Golf Story… what is wrong with you? It’s an awesome mix of classic RPG with memorable dialogue mashed together with a decent golf game.

Did I mention it has frisbee disc golf, and mini golf alongside the normal golf you’d expect. I got about 15 hours of playtime out of it, and still CANNOT beat the last tournament. Holy crap, that was a difficulty spike and a half.

Golf Story has some great writing

Top 3 Switch Games in January

What I am playing now

I’m currently stuck into Mario + Rabbids battle kingdom which is seriously catering to my addiction to turn based strategy games.

I think I am about a third of the way through so this will probably take up most of my February. Maybe I’ll get into Farming Simulator next… I have a lot to choose from anyways…

I still haven’t really completed many games in 2017. I was going to avoid Super Mario Odyssey until I’d beaten Galaxy and Galaxy 2, but that didn’t happen. (I got to the credits in Odyssey, though so that’s OK. Maybe.)

I think NOW would be a good time to STOP buying games, for the last time. 😉

The romp through the story of Odyssey was great, and I definitely agree with the majority of reviews. The game is brilliant! I think it’ll now take its place as a 15 minute game whenever the urge strikes, complete some more mini games, go find some more power moons… The photo mode is really good, btw…

Odyssey’s story took about 12 hours, over 3 gaming sessions. It pretty much consumed me last week.

On the Switch front, I also got myself heartily addicted to Stardew Valley in the last month. Welp, this game does ‘one more day’ perfectly. 25 hours later, and I am just about to start Year 2.

I really need to play some of my ‘other’ switch games such as Disgaea 5, and I am Setsuna… but I think November might be the month of short 3DS games from my backlog. I am pretty close to beating (the first half, anyway) of Pokemon Silver.

I haven’t really gotten into anything much recently. Instead, I tried to play everything at the same time, and got bored of it all before too long.

I started Breath of the Wild, accidentally wiped my save file, started again then didn’t really go back to it. I played Mario Kart 8 Deluxe for about 20 hours in the two weeks after it came out, then haven’t been back to it at all. Also on Switch I bought World of Goo, I am Setsuna, Disgaea 5, Minecraft and never really got into any of them. Whoops. Just need Stardew Valley so I can buy that too, then not play it.

On PS4 I got back into Formula 1 2016 picking up my save from last September on the super easy mode, because driving F1 cars is hard. I am currently enjoying thoroughly beating everyone even though they basically all forgot how to drive.

F1 2016 on PS4

I also started Dragon Quest Heroes. Are you seeing a trend yet? I like starting games, I like quitting them even more! I’ll probably go back to Dragon Quest Heroes next month, or maybe next year. Long winded story games are basically my nemesis.

I even started Omega Ruby again, with the hilarious plan of completing a Living Pokedex. It didn’t happen when I was at uni with 30 hours a week spare, and I really doubt I will ever complete a living Pokedex now, or any time in the future.

Going forward I am going to try and play a ‘few’ games a week, and blogg about them regularly. Maybe this will make me get through my backlog in a reasonable fashion. Maybe I could even set a target of beating 30 games before the end of 2018? We’ll see.

The Nintendo Switch doesn’t have an Activity Log built into it like those found on the 3DS or the Wii U. However, if you download the Nintendo Switch Parental Controls app which is available for Android and iOS then you will be able to get a list of what games you’ve been playing.

It’s a shame there isn’t just a normal activity log… but this will have to do…

Nintendo Switch Parental Controls App on iOS

The app is designed for parents to be able to limit their children’s playtime but you can disable all of that and just use it for the Activity Log goodness.

On thing to note, you will need the Parental Control PIN occasionally… changing Wifi settings, to log into social accounts for sharing and stuff like that. The PIN is emailed to you and you can find it in the app, so you shouldn’t lose it!

Update (Tues 7th March)

On your profile (click your icon in the top left corner of the home screen) you can see how long you’ve played a game for (for up to 100 hours..)

What does Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright & Pokémon Snap have in common? I completed them both last week!

Two more games off the backlog! The girlfriend and I played Pokemon Snap to the credits in one sitting, and I completed FE Fates Birthright on super easy n00b mode.

Whatever… I am not ashamed, I was totally just playing for the story! Plus, I don’t have time for long-ass RPGs any more. So, having a way to breeze through the story was nice. Maybe one day I’ll go back and play Conquest & Revelations. Probably not though… A snippet of my RPG backlog includes highlights such as Dragon Quest 7, several Final Fantasy Tactics games, several Disgaea games, Skyrim, Morrowind, Witcher 3… you get the idea….

I enjoyed playing Fates on super-scrub mode, but I won’t be going back any time soon.

Pokémon Snap was an awesome game. I genuinely don’t know why we didn’t play it sooner. We got to the credits in about 4 hours and caught about 95% of the Pokémon in the game. Thoughts include: ‘WHY HASN’T NINTENDO MADE POKEMON SNAP 2!!!!!!’, and ‘FUCK YOU OAK! THAT PHOTO WAS AMAZING’. Great game!

I also discovered that two players can use different controllers but still control player 1 on the WiiU Virtual Console. This meant the gf could have the gamepad and I had a pro controller, and we didn’t need to keep passing the controller. Something small, but pretty neat.

This post is to remind me that I should not buy a Nintendo Switch until I have completed a shit load more games that I ALREADY OWN!!!!

There will be more games out then, they will be cheaper, and you do not need to spend over £300 in March just to play Zelda when you haven’t finished most of the Zelda titles you already own. Stop being an idiot.

I used to use Homepass a few years back but my old Pi broke and I never got around to replacing it. I bought a pair of Raspberry Pi 3‘s recently and decided to put one to use as a StreetPass relay for my and my girlfriend’s 3DS as we seem to live in a desert of 3DS’s right now. Shame!

The Raspberry Pi 3 is perfect for this purpose as you need nothing more than an ethernet cable to your router and power. No need for a USB wireless adapter making everything that much simpler.

If you’re wondering what Homepass or Streetpass is, then no fear…

HomePass is a homebrew method of fooling your 3DS system into believing a Global StreetPass Relay exists in your house.

Nintendo released an update to the 3DS StreetPass system in the beginning of August 2013, that would allow users to receive and transmit StreetPass data via Nintendo Zone Wifi Access Points.

Nintendo calls this new system “StreetPass Relay”. Over at GBATemp.net, great minds came together and figured out how to utilize your home WiFi Router/Access Point as a Nintendo Zone StreetPass Relay — but not just a local one, a GLOBAL relay. You will be able to StreetPass people from around the world. Want tons of streetpasses in a single day, without ever leaving the house? Read on 🙂

I found some instructions and an image on Reddit which you can find here. This preprepared image deals with the bridging, firewall rules, run schedule etc.

If you are using Windows, try using Win32diskimager to write the Pi image to your SD card. On a Mac, I used Apple Pi Baker to great success. I tried a couple of times using terminal but it wouldn’t boot successfully. Apple Pi Baker solved my issue.

I have mine set as default to attempt to run every 6 minutes, with a 2% chance of succeeding. The default is 20%. Every six minutes, the script will attempt to start the access point with a Relay MAC address.

It is effectively a roll of the dice, as you don’t need to be getting StreetPass hits every 6 minutes all day. Well, maybe you do. Then you can set the run chance to 100%. My relay should effectively run 624.02 times per day on average (about 3) which suits my needs perfectly.

There is a simple way to duplicate any item that is stackable by using the streetpass functionality built into Fantasy Life for Nintendo 3DS.

Fantasy Life’s Streetpass revolves around choosing an item you wish to give to passers-by. However, it does not take the item from you….

It’s been found that you can choose multiples of an item to give away. Let’s start low… how about a stack of gold ore? Well now you and your friend has that stack of gold ore. I’m sure you can see where this is going! How about some Life Cures? They’ll come in handy no doubt. Rare ores like magic or, marine ore, maybe something from the DLC (which I’ve yet to bother buying) are all pretty good ideas. Mine or buy a stack of 99 of them, and voila. You’ll soon have 198 or them.

See what your friends want, and tell them what you want and you can be rich together!

Inspired by a Reddit post that I was reading whilst procrastinating, I’ve come up with a nice system for dealing with my Steam backlog that’s approaching nearly four hundred games… Gotta do something. And not change the password and forget it exists…

Anyway, the idea is to play every game for at least 1 hour to see if I enjoy it. If not, whatever, it’s done. Move on, if I do then keep playing. Easy? I’ve inputted my steam games into Excel (via SteamDB and excel’s Web data input wizard) and sorted them into one of four categories. Those I haven’t touched at all, or haven’t reach an hour in. Those that I’ve actually completed properly, ones that I am going to skip over and others that I might go back to later. The latter three all count as “completed” for backlog purposes. I’ll sort out separate lists for PS3, Gog.com games, 3DS and Vita titles that I own too.

Need to Play

Completed

One Hour Completed, It’s DONE

Might Continue

Going forward, I’ve selected the first game that appears for each letter. The first batch is as follows. I think I’ll actually complete more than a few of these (Machinarium, Doodles are Bugged) but there are more than a handful of massive games too (GalCiv, East India Company). I have been meaning to try them at some point, and now I can. This will probably take me till at least the Summer holidays. Wish me luck! Not a lot will get played before exams are over in three weeks. Time to play games revise.

Ace of Spades

Bad Rats

Carrier Command: Gaea Mission

Darkest Hour: Europe ’44-’45

East India Company

F.E.A.R.

Galactic Civilizations II: Ultimate Edition

Hack, Slash, Loot

Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis

Jamestown

Killing Floor

Lead and Gold Gangs of the Wild West

Machinarium

Napoleon: Total War

Oddworld: Abe’s Exoddus

Paranautical Activity

RAW Realms of Ancient War

Saira

Take Command: Second Manassas

UFO: Afterlight

Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines

Wargame: European Escalation

Your Doodles Are Bugged!

Zen Bound® 2

Some more rules:

Multiplayer only games can be skipped entirely if I can’t find anyone to play them with.

I was in the mood to play some shorter games (as you may have gathered from my last post) so I started back on playing a few of the Level-5 Guild series games that I had on my console: Liberation Maiden and Attack of the Friday Monsters.

Liberation Maiden

I finished Liberation Maiden in just over an hour on easy mode. It was still pretty challenging for me since I don’t particularly like arcade shooters, but it was a lot of fun. One day I might go back to the individual stages to try and beat my scores, but not any time soon.

Attack of the Friday Monsters

Longer than Liberation Maiden, I also rather enjoyed Attack of the Friday Monsters but I feel that the ending was a bit rushed. The game plays like a visual novel (Think sort of Monkey Island) where you go around talking to various characters, looking for clues, and playing a card game to battle NPCs. The battle system was simple and worked, but probably could of been fleshed out a bit. The story was satsifying (I think, I am still going through it in my mind…) and I’d look forward to a sequel if one were to be announced.